Creamy Roasted Garlic and Potato Soup & Zucchini Ribbon Pasta with Veggies and Cream Sauce

This year, Passover falls out very early in the calendar year. Most years, I am pretty put together with my Passover plans, but this year, I have put off a lot of my menu planning. The opportunity to write some recipes featuring Temp Tee cream cheese for JoyofKosher essentially got me to wake me up.  Passover is right around the corner.

My seder menus are pretty easy to plan. The menu has been pretty much the same since my childhood. It’s those days in between that really get you. I usually work during the intermediate days of Passover, so just like any other day, I need to come up with a fast and easy dinner. Because it’s still March and we are still feeling bits of winter, we are still eating nice and warm foods right now.  My Creamy Roasted Garlic & Potato Soup and my Zucchini Ribbons with Veggies and Cream Sauce are the perfect dairy dishes for weeknight dinners or lunch.

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The Creamy Roasted Garlic & Potato Soup comes together easily and pretty fast. The toughest part is having to wait for the garlic to roast, which takes about a half hour. Once you have that done, it’s smooth sailing. I always have vegetable broth on hand to make soups like this. The combination of the use of the immersion blender while adding the cream cheese, gives this soup an amazing creamy texture and flavor. Check out the recipe over at JoyofKosher.com.

Zucchini-Strips

The Zucchini Ribbons with Veggies and Cream Sauce is my answer to lack of good pasta on Passover. Nobody in my house will eat the packaged Passover potato pasta, so we improvise. Instead of making a noodle out of eggs, we look to our veggies for that texture. By using a peeler or cheese slicer, you can easily get a thin ribbon of zucchini. If you have a julienne peeler, you can achieve more of a spaghetti look and feel. I paired this dish up with whatever veggies I had on hand. The dish is easily adapted. In the past, I’ve simply sautéed the squash in olive oil and herbs. I wanted something richer this time around, and the Temp Tee cream cheese was the perfect addition. The cream sauce really turned this vegetable from a side dish to a dinner meal. You can check out the recipe here.

Creamy Roasted Garlic & Potato Soup               Zucchini Ribbons with Veggies & Cream Sauce

Passover Appetizers with Temp Tee Cream Cheese

Did you know that Passover is coming? We’re all getting just a bit crazy now that Purim is over. We’re in that one-month crunch to prepare for a week of fun. Houses are getting cleaned up and the stores are getting stocked with matzah – so much matzah! Menus are being planned. Do you know what you are serving up at your Passover seder?

I’ve been making my own Passover the past few years. Each year I get a bit more laid back and things get a bit more easy. Our meals are simple, and we can do without pizza or pasta for a week.

One thing I can’t do without is cream cheese. On Passover, it is always Temp Tee. Growing up, Passover cream cheese was the one thing we could rely on. It was guaranteed to be available and certified kosher for passover in my Midwest city. We may not have been able to get kosher-for-Passover frozen waffles, but we could always get the cream cheese. That pink container was brought out to our breakfast table every morning. My sisters and I would sit around the table munching on crumbly matzah spread generously with cream cheese. So much nostalgia there.

I was recently approached to share some creative recipes that feature the beloved cream cheese. I kept going back to that crunch of the matzah against the Temp Tee cream cheese. I had to do more than that. I decided to share with you two appetizer recipes. Appetizers are my favorite part of the meal.

I came up with some crunchy and spicy baked jalapeño poppers as well as a baked caramelized onion dip. Both of these dishes are great for eating around the family table or when entertaining guests. They are wonderful for Passover and year-round. They are also easy to make. My kind of recipe!

        Click here for the Jalapeño Poppers!                     Click here for the Caramelized Onion Dip!

*This blog post is sponsored by the fine folks at Temp Tee, but all opinions and recipes in this post are my own.

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